<b>What is the GUILD?</b>
The Guild is a group "by the people for the people" as they say. It's a cooperative association of authors and aspiring authors (and just plain fishermen) who work together to provide top quality published flyfishing stories for the web. In it's charter year, the venue will be to generate a sponsor-funded Dream Trip Drawing for a lucky contributor each season, all proceeds will go into the Drawing Account.

<b>New Private Discussion Area</b>
If you choose to become a Guild Member, you will be able to see a new category called "Forum Writers Guild" as soon as I switch your account over. This is where we will post new stories for each other to review and offer other constructive comments, praise, status reports, etc.

<b>Obligations as a Member</b>
You would be obligated to submit an article outline or preview (just a brief rough version so we can tell what you're up to) within 30 days of enrolling. This is to let us get started finding sponsorship for your story, and plan for a good variety of content. You should expect to provide a first draft of the story within 60 days. We will help you get the article ready for sponsors to fight over [img]http://216.71.206.188/images/flytalk/Wilk.gif" border="0" align="middle"> within 90 days if all goes right. These durations are just guidelines, to give you an idea. There will be no pop quiz or report card.

<b>Sponsorship and the Guild Dream Trip Drawing</b>
It will be the shared responsibility of the guild members, myself and business development appointees to find a sponsor (or group of sponsors) to generate a total of $100 worth of advertising support to publish the article. Once published, the author will receive an entry ticket for the annual Guild Dream Trip drawing. I suspect that the first drawing will result in a modest grand prize, but with time and momentum the prize could become very significant! The only obligation of winning will be - a featured article describing the prize trip! <img src="http://216.71.206.188/images/flytalk/Wilk.gif[/img] If the trip is declined, the winner is free to do what they wish with the money but the idea is to arrange a trip with cooperating lodges and guides that could not be matched by the value of the cash alone.

A very complementary sidebar or banner will be provided for each sponsor in the layout of the story. The $100 sponsor will get full stage, partials will share the sponsorship with other banners/sidebars, etc.

It hasn't been a problem getting great stories to publish... and the right thing to do with these generous contributions is make a forum for giving back something to the folks who contribute.

As authors of published articles, you would be eligible for certain discounts from many manufacturers and would be likely to receive test equipment once in a while in addition to the prize drawing.

The Guild is not designed to earn money for the site, it's designed to be a fun way to contribute content with some perks for doing so. If we all put some energy into it, the returns will intensify - it's up to the Guild members themselves to make it work! If you're like me, you enjoy just getting your story published, but we might as well make it fun and rewarding.

As Guild members, feel free to comment on the organization of the pages, tools as well as the goals or guidelines of *your* Guild as we move ahead.

Thanks and hope you join the GUILD!

<font color="ff0000"><center>*** RESPOND TO THIS THREAD TO BE INCLUDED ***</center></font><!--color-->

Juro, I signed up when you first started. I submitted an article,"Fishing the two weight". Either it got lost, you couldn't deciper Microsoft 2000, or you didn't feel it was worthy. I do have another one ready, but I wanted to hear about the last first.I have been thinking of writting a book called "Sixty years of Flyfishing". I have started getting it together. I figure it is going to take me 2 years to write, that becomes 60 years, if I live that long.

Hi Art! I have everything you (and everyone else) sent me safely stored. I've not seen anything unworthy! I suspect I never will, the objective is to work together to get more good content ready to post and get sponsorship for. I will put your article into the Guild Review Section and consider you a member... sorry it took me so long to make this "official"!

Also: There's a list of folks who already informed me of their interest. I am recalling the trail of emails to put that list together... but if it's not too much trouble I would appreciate a reminder or a posted reply to confirm now that things are being set up to get going on the "Guild Year". My email has been through some instability over the last couple of months and I wouldn't want to miss anyone!

Here's what I THINK the list looks like thus far...

If you don't see yourself on the list, and want to get on... just say so! Let me know if I listed you in error too. Apologies if you already informed me and I somehow screwed it up.

Great to hear it Pete - I'm very anxious to read your articles myself!

Once you log into FlyTalk, you will be able to see the Guild section. Post your outline / article draft in the board provided. Several have emailed their submissions already, I will put them into the section as mentioned. Email ends up burying the submission in my over-burdened email inbox. Posting gets the ball rolling and we as a group will all have an idea of what others are working on, avoiding redundancy and accelerating the dynamics of working together.

Images are linked in using the <font color="ff0000">[<!--no-->img=&lt;url&gt;<!--no-->]</font><!--color--> tag like usual, full instructions and other alternatives will be provided in the guild section itself.